Viking strategy gem Northgard leaves Early Access

Correction:The early access piece was from a year & two weeks ago, not two weeks.

We come from the land of the ice and snow~ From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow~

If you’ve been anywhere near the UK this past week, you’ll have probably seen Winter (with a capital W) coming back for one last clawing grasp at our dreary little isle. Perhaps some of you even took a liking to the sight of snow on the ground, and your breath condensing in the air. These people are wrong and bad, but we love them anyway.

Mercifully, we exile those poor, wrong-headed folks to the frozen north now, albeit in RTS form. Northgard, the clever little Viking town-building strategy game from French outfit Shiro Games is out now, after a well-received stretch in the icy fjords of Steam Early Access.

It’s good to see an RTS released these days that looks so traditional. Chunky, in a way that few others than Warcraft 3 can claim to be. As much as I’ve enjoyed the likes of Total Warhammer and Eugen’s more zoomed-out strategy fare in recent years, it’s nice to see something so highly praised that looks like this.

On the subject of high praise, Brendan went and took a look at the early access version a year ago, and found it so compelling that despite finding Wisdom victories a little easy to achieve, he found himself compelled to jump in for just one more round after finishing his review. Hard to argue with that kind of praise, and while we’ll probably be taking a look at the final version of the game soon-ish.